Reviewer: Sly SeverusDate: 06/02/14 15:54 Chapter: Red is the color of death

Well, this was certainly cheery. 😝 Okay, I expected it to be dark.

Anyway the imagery in this is amazing. You can almost see the red, slowly overshadowing everything in the castle that used to be pure and innocent.

I loved this and for the most part it seemed to flow nicely. There were just a couple of lines that felt a little off. You start more than one line in a row with and, which ends up sounding like a run-on sentence, even in a poem. And the the last line in the first stanza starts with 'til. No matter how many times I read it, I want to change it to until. It may just be me, but I think that sounds much better.

Overall, a great, dark poem.

Author's Response: Thank you. :) I certainly found it to be cheerful >.< And thank you for the critique! I realize that "And"s can throw off a piece, and perhaps I did throw in too many. Keep reading! ~Nagini

Reviewer: OregonianDate: 04/19/14 18:54 Chapter: Red is the color of death

Hi, Nagini,

I am impelled to write a review of this older poem as we contemplate our joint battle creations, my recent story and your recent poem. I like this poem, as I like all your stuff. It has a different, narrower scope than your recent poem At the Battlefront, focusing on the blood, the anguish, and the loss of innocence.

Your first verse is the most literal, blood splashed all over in large quantity, so much that it evens reaches the water table. That is a lot of blood.

Then you become more figurative, attributing the color red to the all-enveloping anguish and pain that accompanies the battle. Of course it must be vivid, piercing red, not warm yellow or soothing light blue or lilac, or sweet pale pink, or the green hue of nature. I checked out the timeline of the battle, to see when the sun was falling, and it occurred at the point where Harry, Ron, and Hermione leave the lake where they fell from the dragon and return to Hogsmeade, to trigger the final battle, which extended through a night in which there seemed to be no winning and no hope.

The third verse touches on something not too often discussed: the inevitable loss of innocence by the participants who manage to survive. We see this foreshadowed when Harry Cruciates Amycus Carrow in the Ravenclaw tower and remarks, “I see what Bellatrix meant, you really need to mean it.”By the end of the battle, the combatants have done things they never thought they would mean to do. You cannot fight, try to hurt, maim, or kill, without being permanently changed by it. You see some of the worst that the world has to offer; you learn that sometimes there are no good answers, just different degrees of bad. You learn that you are capable of doing things, both brave and violent, that you would never have expected. You are not the same person afterwards.

In verse four, lines two, three, and four reiterate the themes of verses one, two, and three, and then the red changes to black, implying in my mind that some combatants die, and everything turns black for them, and also that the spilled blood eventually dries up and turns black, as blood will do if it’s not cleaned away. The battle comes to some sort of an end, sooner or later, and the once-red blood becomes dry and black, a reminder of a terrible thing that happened in the past.

It almost makes one shudder, reading this poem and imagining the battle. Good job.

Vicki

Author's Response: Happy Review Day to me! :) Thank you so much for this beautiful review!!!!! I am glad to see that you are reading my other battle poetry. I particularly liked this one, because I don't normally use metaphors in this manner, and therefore, it took a while to write for me, but in the end I was proud of it. I like your interpretations, too, and would like to add on to the black color interpretation in that it represents not only death, but an abyss, an emptiness, a nothingness. And good pick up on dry blood! :) Keep reading!!!! ~Nagini

Reviewer: atrueblueDate: 11/02/13 11:25 Chapter: Red is the color of death

So dark! Good job capturing what the Hogwarts battle was like.

Author's Response: Why thank you. :) I am glad you found it to be so. Keep reading!~Nagini